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It took millions of years of evolution to figure out how to walk on two legs. It’s a surprisingly complicated feat of engineering involving a series of controlled falls.

But what about walking with just one leg? Thanks in part to the many amputees coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, there have been huge advances in the design of prostheses. People who would have been in wheelchairs a generation ago are now able to walk.

Bob Anderson is a case in point. Cancer took not just his leg, but half of his pelvis.

“Losing a limb is like losing a loved one,” says Karen Andrews, MD, a rehabilitative doctor at Mayo Clinic where Bob was fitted for his artificial leg.

Bob was counseled for the emotional trauma even as he learned to use his new leg. The prosthesis has a computer which senses how Bob is moving through space and reacts instantly, just like our brains do when we are walking with our own limbs.

It took a lot of practice, but Bob is now able to walk the golf course again.

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